Saturday, April 16, 2016

While the original Summerhill Kitten Farm (built in 1890) was transformed into an electronic cottage before we had cats, these days many of the technological advances at the Kitten Farm West are actually driven by the Feline Overlords.

For example:

The main reason we own a an HP CP2025dn LaserJet is not because it's a fast networked duplexing color printer, and that it uses powdered toner which doesn't dry out. No, we bought it because by combining the function of a color inkjet and a B&W Laserjet, we have a single taller printer that leaves more space in my office for cats and makes a better launch pad for Whitey or Penwiper to do a spider-cat worthy jump to the top of the library bookshelf.

Recently, we adjusted the shelving in the living room entertainment center so that the receiver, a smarter brother of the Big Black Kitty Warmer in my office, now has the shelf clearance to be used by a feline for its true purpose of keeping a cat toasty. They haven't discovered it yet, but they will.

Back at Christmas, we replaced +Katherine Derbyshire's aged iPad 2 with a iPad Mini 4, which is faster and smaller. With the recent addition of a Zagg keyboard and an iOS beta of her favorite writing tool, that means more futon time in place of sitting at her desktop, with more room for a feline in her lap.

Alas, our work is never done.

Yesterday, Katherine pinged me from her office to ask me to print a document that she'd put on the cloud. I found this odd, but complied. While I printed it and fetched the result, she explained that she was on her futon with her iPad -- and the cat on her lap had decreed she didn't need to get up just then. She had already searched for how to print directly from her iPad and found something called AirPrint, but our monster of a printer, released in 2009, has never heard of it. Fortunately, Google search has.

After I chatted with our local server, the Chief Kitten Valet can now print from her iPad. I don't know how she'll retrieve the result, though.

p.s. We interrupted writing this post after the word "complied" to worship the just-arrived-on-my-desk Penwiper. He was petted, and settled on a desk pillow to groom himself.